Traditional card games, such as poker, contract bridge, and the like, have been played using a predetermined number of deck cards. For example, a conventional deck or pack of playing cards is composed of fifty-three or fifty-four cards, namely, thirteen spades, thirteen hearts, thirteen clubs, thirteen diamonds and one or two jokers. In most card games, a conventional deck (or decks) of playing cards is shared among players joining a game.
In the gaming industry there is a significant volume of gambling which occurs at live table games that use playing cards. Exemplary live table games include blackjack, poker, baccarat, and others. These and many other games all involve play using playing cards. The use of playing cards has a number of associated limitations and disadvantages which have plagued the gaming industry.
The use of playing cards at live table games typically involves several operational requirements which are time-consuming. These operations are conveniently described as collecting, shuffling and dealing the cards. In many card games there is also a step of cutting the deck after it has been shuffled.
In the collecting operation, a dealer typically collects the cards just played at the end of a hand of play. This is done in preparation for playing the next hand of cards. The cards are best collected so all are in a face-down or face-up condition. The cards also are typically straightened into a stack with the long sides and short sides aligned. These manipulations take time and are not typically appreciated by either the dealer or players as enhancing the play and entertainment value of the game.
In many games the cards collected at the end of the hand are deposited in a discard rack, which collects the played cards until the time a new stack is obtained or the stack is shuffled. In some games the cards are immediately shuffled into the stack either manually or using a shuffling machine. More typically, the cards are collected and then shuffling is performed later by the dealer.
When conventional shuffling is needed, it involves a break in the action of the table game and consumes a significant amount of time. Shuffling is also the most time-consuming operation in preparing for the next hand. Thus, shuffling is of substantial financial significance to the gaming industry because it requires significant time and reduces the number of hands which can be played per hour or other period of time. In light of this, there has been interest by casino owners to develop practices which allow more games to be played in a given amount of time. Accomplishing this without detracting from the players' enjoyment and desire to play the game is a challenging and longstanding issue for casino owners and consultants in the gaming industry.
An additional consideration in the casino industry is the costs associated with shuffling machines. Shuffling machines currently available have costs in the thousands of dollars. Such machines save time in performing the shuffling process, but still require time to load, operate and unload. These factors reduce the savings associated with reduced shuffling time and effort.
Another form of cards used for entertainment are trading cards. Some forms of trading card can be rare and difficult to obtain. Playing cards, as distinguished from trading cards, are often readily available. This is especially true of the well-known decks of fifty-two (or fifty-three or fifty-four) playing cards. Many different games can be played with a single deck of this type of playing cards. The number of games possible is limited for the most part only by the imagination of the players. Playing cards themselves, individually and collectively, usually have no value other than their amusement value. Similarly, some card games require decks especially printed for the game. Cards of this nature have little value other than their value for the playing of the particular game for which they are printed.
Many games played with conventional playing cards are games of chance. Games of chance can have rules that either require the random selection of cards or depend in some other way upon the occurrence of events outside the control of the players. Other games played with conventional cards may require strategy. Strategy games usually limit the level of strategy with restrictive rules of play.
However, collectible card games have made a significant impact on both the trading card industry and on the game industry. Collectible cards suitable for use in playing games of this nature are also known as fantasy trading cards. Exemplary fantasy trading cards represent fictional characters and situations.
One such game is a fantasy game utilizing figures such as sorcerers, wizards, monsters, and other combatants as subject matter. Another such game utilizes a science fiction universe previously created for television and movie entertainment. Fantasy games may often include cards that are rarer than other cards. However, determining which cards may be more rare is not integral when using the cards, rather each card or combination of cards has characteristics that may be used in strategic game play.
Conventionally, a wide variety of such fantasy trading card games have been also proposed, each of which has its fans. In contrast to the conventional card decks, such fantasy trading card games are usually played with decks of cards which are different from one another (and may not have an equal number of cards). However, it is to be noted that many of the fantasy trading card games are common to one another in the viewpoint of being played through the following three stages.
At the first stage, players of each fantasy trading card game gather their cards from various kinds of cards that have been issued in order to build their collection. Each species of card has a different effect in the game and in many cases, the more effective a card is, the fewer numbers of that card are issued (i.e., better cards are often rarer). A pack of cards is often sold with opaque packaging so that players cannot identify the contents or species of cards packaged before they purchase them. As a result, decks purchased by players would have different card constructions from each other, and if a player wants to build a powerful deck, the player has to collect (and possibly trade) cards.
At the second stage, each player selects a number of cards from their collection to build a deck. Usually, a card has ability points and properties, and an ability point may be modified according to its property. Furthermore, there are cards that have special effects in addition to or instead of ability points and properties. Therefore, in order to build a desirable deck, each player must not only collect cards with high ability points but also select cards suitable for their game strategy, taking into consideration various cards' properties and special effects. A good player may build a suitable deck if the player knows their opponent's card list.
At the third stage, two (or more) players individually prepare their decks from their collections of cards and thereafter start a trading card game among them. They draw one or more cards for their hands from their decks and then each of them puts a card from his hand on a game field by turns. Card-to-card matches are made between cards on the field repeatedly and after a series of matches a winner or a loser of the game is decided.
At the first stage mentioned above, players have fun collecting cards to strengthen their collections. A card provider (e.g., a company that creates and distributes the cards) who provides the fantasy trading card game should increase the number of types of cards to enhance each player's game experience. However, to ensure that players enjoy the game, game balance should be preserved. While some players may clamor for more powerful cards, unchecked increases in the introduction of powerful cards is likely to destroy the balance of game. Specifically, if a lot of species of cards that have high ability points are introduced, then players who have acquired these cards may become too powerful for beginning players to enjoy playing the game with them.
Many fantasy trading card games have been computerized as video games. Compared with the live fantasy trading card games, such conventional computerized trading card games do not allow for the collection and trading of individual cards between players, thereby omitting some of the fun from the collecting phase of the trading card games. Likewise, it is difficult to incrementally increase the number of card species within a video game beyond what was originally included in the video game. Accordingly, a great number of card species and cards have to be prepared in advance in each computerized trading card game before the beginning to supplying the game to players. On the other hand, paper-printed trading card games can easily increase card species simply by issuing new card species in addition to the existing card species. Players with the new card(s) and players without new cards can still play the game together.
Other forms of trading cards include collectible cards for disbursing and collecting information about public figures. For example, trading cards representing figures in the entertainment industry can depict music performers or television and movie personalities. More familiar types of trading cards are the well-known baseball and other sports player cards. Baseball cards are often provided with a photographic depiction of an athlete along with biographic and statistical information concerning various athletes and teams. Other cards dealing with sports figures are also available and are used by sports enthusiasts for collecting information about athletes and sports teams.
Additionally, trading cards directed to niche markets continue to develop. The sports and non-sports subject matter can be as varied and obscure as women's bowling, bass fishing and National Historical Parks. However, the most successful sets are those with wide appeal that contain opportunities to have ongoing content for the cards. This partly accounts for the success of sports cards. However, any type of cards can be used by enthusiasts of the subject matter as trading cards.
Enthusiasts may exchange trading cards with other enthusiasts in order to obtain cards that are needed to complete sets of related cards or to obtain cards that are not readily available. Collectors can also buy and sell trading cards for their economic and historic value. Since some trading cards are more common than others, the monetary value of a card can depend on its availability.
In addition to new card games and software games for playing card games, communications between electronic devices have also improved in recent years. Communication networks are well known in the computer communications field. By definition, a network is a group of computers and associated devices that are connected by communications facilities or links. Network communications can be of a permanent nature, such as via cables, or can be of a temporary nature, such as connections made through telephone or wireless links. Networks may vary in size, from a local area network (“LAN”), consisting of a few computers or workstations and related devices, to a wide area network (“WAN”), which interconnects computers and LANs that are geographically dispersed, to a remote access service, which interconnects remote computers via temporary communication links. An internetwork, in turn, is the joining of multiple computer networks, both similar and dissimilar, by means of gateways or routers that facilitate data transfer and conversion from various networks. A well-known abbreviation for the term internetwork is “internet.” As currently understood, the capitalized term “Internet” refers to the collection of networks and routers that use the Internet Protocol (“IP”), along with higher-level protocols, such as the Transmission Control Protocol (“TCP”) or the Uniform Datagram Packet (“UDP”) protocol, to communicate with one another.
In addition to improvements in communications, recent developments in display technologies and electronic components now allow certain types of thin, flexible, and/or lightweight circuits suitable for displaying images and text. For example, various forms of electrophoretic displays (e.g., e-paper, e-ink, color e-ink and the like) provide non-volatile display technologies that may be used to form images on a display surface that does not change, even when not connected to a power supply (or in some forms they only require a relatively small amount of power to display an image). Likewise, new forms of liquid crystal display (“LCD”) panels may be produced as flexible panels that can display color images (some electrophoretic displays cannot display color).
In addition to display technologies, numerous improvements in power technology now allow for thin and/or flexible batteries and other power sources (e.g., photo voltaic, ambient, radio frequency and the like). However, these display and power technologies have yet to be applied to the gaming and trading card arenas.